


Cherrystones and Lavender

by Atropos_lee



Series: Windward [1]
Category: Hornblower (TV), Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Childhood, Coming of Age, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-10-10
Updated: 2001-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-03 19:17:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atropos_lee/pseuds/Atropos_lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His first memory was spots of sunlight on the wall above his crib, moving to and fro and always just out of reach of his fat little fingers.  Mama reached in and held his hand and smiled.  "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cherrystones and Lavender

His first memory was spots of sunlight on the wall above his crib, moving to and fro and always just out of reach of his fat little fingers. Mama reached in and held his hand and smiled. 

Mrs Betty put him down in his crib. Mrs Betty called him “gypsy,” and her apron was soft and warm and smelt of milk and new bread. 

Mama’s skirt was blue and cool and smelt of lavender. 

Mama’s hair was the colour of sunlight. Mrs Betty held his hand when he toddled into the orchard, and laughed when he chased the hens. She cried when Mama breeched him, and said her black-eyed gypsy boy was all grown up to be a soldier for the king.

He counted cherry stones on his plate:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor  
Richman, Poorman, Beggar man  
Thief

Papa threw him in the air and he laughed when he turned upside down, and the sky rushed up to him and down again. 

In the night he called out, and Mama walked him up and down in the starlight, and sang nonsense in his ear. 

Diaphenia like the daffadowndilly,  
White as the sun, fair as the lily  
Heigh ho, how do I love thee!  
I do love thee as my lambs  
Are beloved of their dams;  
How blest were I if thou woulds’t prove me.

He was happy when she sang, but cried out when she put him back down into the dark, and held out his arms, until she picked him up and sang again

Diaphenia like the daffadowndilly…

until the sun came up.

Then Mrs Betty was gone and Jemima and Julia were come, and Jemima was hard and dark, and pulled when she combed out the tangles in his hair, and pinched his cheeks when he cried, and Julia was small and pink, and took his crib in Mama’s room, and he had to sleep in Jemima’s room.

At first Julia had no hair, and her face was angry and red, and he hoped she would leave soon.

Mama didn’t come when he cried, and Jemima didn’t sing to him. One night she told him that if he was quiet she’d teach him to tickle for trout. She put her hand under his nightshirt and rubbed his belly until he felt all warm and tingly, and better than when Papa threw him up in the air. Then he slept. 

After that, if he woke in the night he didn’t cry out. He tickled his trout and then he slept.

Papa taught him to say his letters, and read aloud from his big books. He had to concentrate to get the long words right. If he didn’t get them right Papa looked sad, and sent him upstairs to think. If he didn’t get them right he’d have to grow up to be a tinker or a thief. 

Rich man,   
Poor man,   
Beggar man,   
Thief.

Perhaps Papa would send him back to live with the Gypsies.

Julia grew hair as yellow as Mama’s and her eyes were blue like Mama’s skirt and when she cried he held her little fist, and she pulled his finger into her mouth and sucked with her hard gums. If the Gypsies brought him, perhaps the Little People left Julia. He worried they would take her away again, and hoped they hadn’t heard him wish he could have his crib back.

Papa’s room was full of glass boxes and cupboards and jars and books. It smelt wonderful and strange and sharp. His Papa opened the glass cupboards and showed him the strange things inside. He let him hold the bone head, with the jaw that snapped shut on a spring, and the top that opened like a box. He put his toy soldiers in the head. Papa laughed. The real name was Scull. Scull made Jemima scream and drop the breakfast tray. Jemima slapped him. Mama spanked him. Papa locked Scull up in the cupboard.

Jemima had admirers, and walked out in the village every day, with Julia in her arms, and Horatio trotting behind, so she could talk to Adam, the Joiner’s apprentice, and Mr Joe from the oast house. She would walk to her mother’s house, and sit and drink tea, while Julia slept in the laundry basket by the fire and Horatio played with fir cones and pebbles under the table.

Mr Joe was pale and smelt of malt. Sometimes Jemima let him press her against the washhouse wall and rub, but she wouldn’t let him pull her petticoats up. It was something to do with his trout, but he grunted more like Ezekiel the boar. One day Horatio saw him tucking it away in his breeches. Now he was grown up he knew that the real name wasn’t trout. The real name was prick. 

Mr Joe had a prick. Ezekiel had a prick. Horatio had a little prick. Julia didn’t have a prick. Perhaps she’d grow one later. Jemima didn’t have a prick. He watched her washing one night, from under the blanket, and even in the dark he was fairly sure she didn’t have a prick.

Adam was big and brown, and when Jemima teased him, sat Horatio on his knee. His hands were broad, and rough to touch, and his hair was shiny and dark hair peeped out from his shirt, and he smelt of wood shavings and resin, and something darker, like mushrooms. Horatio liked Adam. He wondered if the hair went all the way down under his shirt. He wondered if he had hair on his prick, and followed around all one day, secretly hoping that he would see him piss. But his Mama came and found him, and scolded him for running away from Jemima, and made him apologise to the joiners for bothering them at work . 

One day Adam made Horatio search the all pockets of his big coat until he found a little wooden boat, painted red, with real sails. 

Mama took him to the stream to launch his boat. He called it "Weary Daffydilly,” and it floated well, until Poppy, the parson's spaniel, chewed it up. After that it listed badly and took on water in the rapids by the water mill.

One day he found a big book of pictures on Papa’s desk. He had to stand on the chair to turn the pages. The people in the pictures had no clothes on. They held open their chests and bellies like a cupboard and pointed at the things inside. A man pointed at his heart and smiled as if he had done something very clever. He made Horatio laugh.

There was a picture of lady with no clothes on. Her belly was peeled back like an orange, or the petals of a flower. Curled up inside was a baby, like a pip.

He liked to read the book with the man who sailed to a country full of little people, where the sheep were as small as mice. He told Mama all about how they tied the man down with cobbler's threads, and how he visited a king who sat on his hand.

He wasn’t so sure now that babies were left by Gypsies and Little People after all.

Mama was too fat to go to the stream any more. She lay down in the parlour, and watched him play in through the window. Jemima had to sit with her, and couldn’t go out walking, and Horatio couldn’t ask Adam to mend his boat. When it rained Mama taught him to play Gin. He liked counting the cards.

There was another book he liked even more about a man who sailed to an island where he was all alone for years and years except for a dog and a parrot, until one day he saw a black foot in the sand and it was a Friday, and he wasn’t alone any more.

He put some cake and a jar of water in the bread trough in the yard, and made Poppy the spaniel sit with him, and pretended that he was all shipwrecked and looking for an island. Poppy ate up all the cake and was sick.

One day Jemima didn’t get him up, and Mama wasn’t in the parlour, and when he heard Mama calling, he ran and opened the door to her room. Papa came instead, and shut him out, and told him to look after Julia. So he put Julia on his hip, and took her to the kitchen, where Mrs Graham sat them both on the table, and fed them bread, and cheese and lumps of sugar, and listened at the door to hear his Mama calling and calling, and then patted his head, and said he was a brave soldier.

Jemima took him to see his Mama and his little brothers. Papa wouldn’t come out of his room. Jemima’s mother, Mother Jenkins, was in the kitchen washing her hands. It was very bright in Mama’s room, because of the snow outside. The curtains were drawn so Mama could sleep, but it was still very bright. He held Jemima’s hand very tight. 

Mama had no pillow, and she had a handkerchief pinned over her hair. The coverlet was pulled all they way up to her chin, and was very smooth.

His brothers were lying on the blanket chest. They were lying head to tail on a napkin, very small and white, and he thought they looked just like scalded pigs’ pettitoes on the butcher’s stall in town. 

Jemima held him up to kiss Mama goodbye, and she smelt of lavender and soap, but her face was too smooth and very cold, and somehow he wasn’t sure it was Mama at all, whatever Jemima said.

Later that night he forgot he was a grown up boy and called out, and no one came. He could hear voices in the parlour, Papa, and the parson, and the parson’s wife, and the Misses Bates, sitting up late with cake and wine. So he slid out of bed and padded along the landing to Mama’s room. 

He could just reach the door handle.

Mama hadn’t moved. He climbed up on to the chair and pulled back the handkerchief. Her hair looked white in the moonlight, so he still wasn’t sure that it was Mama. He whispered in her ear and she didn’t wake up.

He pulled back the coverlet. Her hands were resting on her chest, and her lace night shift smelt of lavender, and there was lavender on the sheets. Her hands were cold and stiff, but they were definitely his Mama’s hands, which made him feel much better.

So he curled up under the coverlet, and snuggled up under Mama’s arm, curling one hand around her waist, and slipping his thumb into his mouth.

Which is where they found him the next morning, when Adam and his master came to coffin Mrs Hornblower and the stillborns, fast asleep in his mother’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a character sketch, one of the first stories I ever finished and shared


End file.
